NBC airing first episode of SNL as a Carlin tribute - VIDEO
Of the many achievements George Carlin had in his long career, one that gets underplayed a bit is that he was the guest host on the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live — then called NBC’s Saturday Night, thanks to Howard Cosell — in 1975. Not a bad choice, I’d have to say; since the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” were only a part of that first episode (there was a lot of music and odd Muppets about … the show took some time to find itself), they needed Carlin to carry a lot of the comedic load. And that he did, giving the audience a number of his best routines from that time period.
As a tribute to the recently-deceased comedy legend, NBC will air the entire premiere episode of SNL this Saturday night. For those who have never seen the premiere before (it’s on a DVD set of the complete first season), it’ll be interesting to see how different the first episode is from the SNL format they know and hate-love today. I’ll be DVRing it; will you?
To give you a taste, the opening monologue — an early version of Carlin’s classic “Baseball and Football” routine — is after the jump.
Stump the King - Mike Myers
So this week, NBC aired The Best of Mike Meyers and it brought back a lot of memories for me. When I was in my twenties, Meyers was the man. Wayne, Dieter and Simon were some of my favorite topics to discuss on Sundays. More importantly, he was one of the few SNL alums to make the move to the big screen successfully.
For those of you who have been living in a cave, while wearing a blindfold with your hands over your ears, the special was clearly just a way for Meyers to promote his new film, The Love Guru. Even though, the movie looks like crap, it’s nice to see Meyers making another try at a film franchise.
Wayne’s World was the first SNL-inspired movie to achieve the TV to cinema success since The Blues Brothers. Unfortunately there were some residual effects.
Once Lorne Michaels saw how much money he could make by recycling sketches, he forced the public to sit through a collection of the worst movies ever put on film.
Superstar, Night at the Roxbury, The Ladies Man and It’s Pat were all bad ideas. The amazing part is that the only star of those movies to have any kind of film career is Will Ferrell, who has managed to make a movie out of characters who weren’t much more than one joke characters in the first place.
I was a fan of the first two Austin Powers films and I respect Meyers for realizing that he couldn’t make a decent film out of Dieter, so I wish him luck with Love Guru and hope he can get back to the business of funny.
Now for this week’s question…
Who is the only person to appear on SNL as a musical guest, host and cast member?
Congratulations to Bill and Ben. Dan Aykroyd and Michal Mckean are both correct.
Michelle Obama Gears Up for a Gabfest
No more View from the cheap seats for Michelle Obama.
The potential next first lady of the United States is slated to appear June 18 as a guest host on The View.
No celebrity guests have been booked yet, but we’re sure Barack Obama’s Princeton and Harvard-educated missus will have no trouble being heard over the most vocal ladies in daytime.
Cindy McCain shared couch space with late-night host Craig Ferguson when she performed guest-hosting duties in April.
But although Mrs. McCain beat Mrs. Obama to the coffee klatch, both have the inside track on how to stir it uptheir husbands, who right this second are focusing on going head-to-head in November, have been guests on the morning chatfest multiple times.
“We treat the wives differently than the candidates,” executive producer Bill Geddie told the Associated Press, adding that they invited Obama on as a guest but that she requested the same role given to McCain. “We’re tougher on the candidates than we are on the wives. We’re trying to get to know them.”
Michelle Obama will be a guest host on The View
Another potential First Lady is set to join the ladies of the The View. Following Cindy McCain’s April appearance, Michelle Obama will be a guest host on the show’s June 18 episode. Obama was offered a guest appearance, but wanted to try her hand at hosting instead. This will be her first appearance on the talk show; Barack Obama has been a guest twice before.
As a guest host, Michelle Obama will help conduct interviews, participate in the show’s “hot topics” segment, and chat about current events. She’ll also be interrupted by her co-hosts on numerous occasions. The guest lineup for Obama’s episode hasn’t been set yet. Cindy McCain interviewed Craig Ferguson when she guest-hosted.
It was smart of Michelle Obama to guest-host instead of appearing in an interview segment. She’ll get plenty of screen time without all of the attention being on her. Still, I would prefer to learn more about her in a traditional interview. I don’t have it in me to watch an entire episode of The View just to get a sense of Michelle Obama’s personality.